Conservative Gant Wins Pole For Nascar Season Finale

``Tiptoed'' means 176.902 miles per hour, easily the quickest among the 50 drivers who tried to qualify for NASCAR's season finale. The track record of 180.183 mph was set last fall by Rick Mast.

Earlier in the day, Gant had seen seven drivers crash or spin on the slick and treacherous 1.522-mile track. That told him everything he needed to know about qualifying strategy.

``I was real conservative and would have been satisfied anywhere in the top 20,'' Gant said after his first pole of the season. ``I never once hit the throttle hard. It would have been stupid to have gone any harder.''

Gant's pole-winning lap was 1.556 mph faster than that of second-fastest Brett Bodine. In turn, Bodine was just .012 mph faster than Mast, the No. 3 qualifier.

Ted Musgrave and Jimmy Spencer rounded out the top five, followed by Bobby Hamilton, Ernie Irvan, Bill Elliott, Rick Bickle and Lake Speed. Additional qualifying today will set the balance of the 42-car grid.

Winston Cup points leader Dale Earnhardt and second-ranked Rusty Wallace qualified side by side on Row 10 - Earnhardt 19th and Wallace 20th. Earnhardt will win his sixth Winston Cup if he finishes 34th or better Sunday, regardless of how Wallace fares.

``I feel a lot better now that we've qualified,'' Earnhardt said. ``We didn't set the woods on fire because we used up our best stuff in one practice lap. I just hate that we wrecked our good car.''

Earnhardt was among seven drivers who crashed Friday. Team owner Richard Childress quickly rolled out a backup Chevy and called his North Carolina shop to have yet another car delivered in time for today's practice sessions.

Watching those spins convinced Gant to slow down and not try to overpower the track.

``If it hadn't been for those crashes,'' he conceded, ``I probably would have tried to go harder. But those guys told me they felt perfect until their car just jumped out from under them. ``On a scale of 1 to 10, my qualifying lap was about a 9. I had plenty of car left, but was afraid to use it. I had no ideamy time would hold up.''

But apparently nobody wanted to run all out. After qualifying 22nd, Darrell Waltrip said the choices were to go hard and hope, or take it easy and probably survive in one piece. ``You have to get out of the gas early and get back real quick,'' the three-time AMS winner said. ``You've got to be really conservative with a track like this.''

Ricky Rudd qualified 13th, but felt he reigned in his Chevrolet by a full second.

``Good drivers don't just lose it and wreck like this morning,'' he said. ``The cars are kind of skimming the track and not sticking to it. If it hadn't been for the wrecks, I might have gone a second quicker. ``The question is, how much do you want to go for that second? The track is so unpredictable you don't want to take a chance.''

The source of concern is a petroleum-based sealer applied to the asphalt three weeks ago. Instead of uniformly filling the cracks and making the track smooth, the sealer appeared to have been slopped on plentifully.

Unseasonably warm weather and heavy use caused the sealer to soften and ooze up from the cracks. Instead of staying below the surface, it now is atop it.

``They just globbed it on,'' Earnhardt said. ``When it came up, it made the track different from what these tires were built for. I hope it gets better before Sunday.

``It's unfair to do this at this point of the season. Why did they have to mess it up with the points race on the line? Man, they just flat goofed up.''